Exploring technique and the one on one bond between artist and model, through figurative representation, has remained part of my practice since the beginning. A portrait goes beyond capturing the physical appearance of the subject. The sitter’s identity and their relationship with the painter become intertwined thus depicting an intimate reality on canvas.

One can say that an artist’s work is never done, and mine is certainly never perfect, but we should all seek to find beauty in life’s imperfections.

My work reveals a tug of war between realistic and abstract elements. This conflict results in the background challenging the foreground. The application and detraction of thick paint with knives enables me to inject emotion. My need to bring the human element to the work remains constant and my desire to pull emotion from the viewer vital.

When I create new artwork, I create a change within myself. Experimenting, photographing and painting has always been an avenue to reveal my deepest emotions, allowing me to understand myself better. For me, it’s important to create this change for the viewer as well while looking at my work. Painting and photographing is a time of reflection, I have found emotional expression to be directly tied to my ability to create abstract pieces and portraits, so I decided to mix the two of them.

Growing up in Malaysia, I was exposed at an early age to a world where there were many differences amongst people, whether it be language, race, food, religion, culture, and ideas. ‘Agree to Disagree’ is my insight into this environment demonstrating that no matter what our differences may be, we can always voice our opinions but still have respect for one another.

In my art, I try to represent objects of beauty that each carries their own story whether the painting is figurative, still life, or landscape. This is accomplished using classical painting techniques with contemporary themes. Impressionist color theory and compositions reminiscent of the modernists are incorporated to further enhance the drama generated by the underlying strong value pattern I use.

I strive to capture the atmosphere and light of this industrial subject. My aim is to create a narrative to hold the viewer’s interest on the image. On this occasion, the old, proud cranes from another era lie dormant. The storage sheds have been transformed into a museum of culture. The buskers are the link from today’s modern youth as daily life passes by.

I believe in the importance of being lost, in the sense of having little or no idea of exactly where we are or where we might be headed – the objective not being to find ourselves (for this is quite impossible), but rather to learn to manage and exploit this state, to embark on voyages of discovery that inevitably lead us to places we never could have imagined. When comfort sets in, we must dare to lose ourselves once more.

My work is about people. Exploring their vulnerability, capturing an honest and exposed resemblance, creating a vivid and forceful image. My portraits are not about the face alone, they portray and question the emotions and experiences behind it. Highlighting and embracing those who may normally be overlooked or criticised for being different. We live in a society where the abnormal is laughed at and my aim is to alter these outdated views.

I am interested in sculpture as an attempt to dematerialize the solid. To achieve this, I often use the structures of Nature, transferring them from microscale to macroscale. I want my sculptures to only suggest the form, leaving the final creation and interpretation to the spectator.

Exaggerating nature’s beauty is a principal quality of my work and a compelling aspect of my inspiration. My perception of the world we live in is emboldened and vivified through large-scale canvases, where seemingly simple, natural objects are graphically and dramatically brought to life. While the shapes, shadows, and textures are less perceptibly real, they take on both magical and majestic features. To create this effect, I balance the classical realism of the Renaissance era with the spirit and spontaneity of contemporary art.

Each painting takes me on a journey, sometimes unwelcome and heartbreaking, sometimes joyous, but always illuminating.

My work is created by digital painting and/or photo-manipulation and often combined with other elements such as, traditional painting mediums, India ink, drawing, 3D rendering, textures and other elements; all of which are combined through digital media. I seek to create imagery that conveys mood, emotion or metaphor that speaks to the subconscious or simply leaves an emotional impression that allows room for the imagination of the viewer to interpret their own personal meaning, feelings or ideas.

Engaged in arts for many years and attempting different artistic techniques I finally ended up with mixed media for the enormously wide range of possibilities it offers. I have since created and continuously do lots of little “illusory worlds” which invite the observer to take a close look.

I am an artist of a few words; my works are my voice. These may be triggered by a personal experience, an eccentric character or my way of sending a satirical message. However, my sculptures are narrative in nature and free to individual interpretation.

The way people are looking into the world, people are living against their background and are expecting something will come into their lives.

Art is precisely the means by which this soul expresses itself. I believe that the human being must remain within the human dimension and not become technocratic, digital, robotic, mercantile, etc. We cannot go beyond our bodily and spiritual boundaries, for this reason, painting remains and will remain forever and expression of the human soul.

What do I do? I observe and absorb. What do I see? Routine and daydreams, contradictions and intensity, simplicity and originality. Who am I? Feminine, millennial, Asian, nothing and maybe everything in something.

Painting is a process of seeing and feeling.

When others speak for me, often now with my grey beard, I find the words are not what my mind, heart, and soul wishes to communicate. Who then has the right and power to misrepresent and describe my heart to others without investigation or knowledge? How can the needy be on the same street with the wealthy and the sunlight appears to care not? Who maintains and understands this symbiotic alternative reality, some with ash and some with gold?

The undercurrent of my work is an appeal to our common humanity and shared universal human values. Through my symbiotic artistic expression of two entwined cultures, I hope to reach beyond the socio-political divisions of fundamentalism and Islamophobia and motivate a positive change in the conception of ‘the other’ as culturally or spiritually impermeable. In my works, I aim to appeal to the universal soul of our human condition, that which is within each of us and that transcends time and geographical space.

Throughout history, the human has tried to explore his skin in order to understand, cope, and advance his existence. The focus of my work re-imagines the body as a new creative form by morphing its individual parts. The intent of the work is to question our physical self and how this relates to our humanity. This piece, Deconstructed Portraiture, is a hyper-surrealistic pseudo-classical take on contemporary life.

To create art, for me, is power and confidence. My paintings should be a carrier of hope. How does an artist handle the unpleasantness the world sometimes brings? Showing it is one possibility or making it even more unpleasant than it is. Instead, I decided to show beauty and hope.

Utilizing primarily 19th-century ephemera, my work is all hand cut with surgeon’s scalpels and assembled with acid-free glues. Nothing is computer generated. My early background in theater – from amateur tap dancer to professional modern dancer – provided a wide range of experience in the theatrics of heightened states of being.

Much of my practice is a reflection on the repetition of forms within visual culture that contribute to the development of identity. I am interested in how objects and images can be resonant in reinforcing our idea of identity, and how the distortion of such forms could provide an alternative outcome. Each work seeks to provide an atmosphere, a basis for questions to arise.

My art is connecting tradition with new age visual semiotics. My art is a countermovement to the material culture of our times. I am re-imagining Christian Tradition. I am replacing the male apostle with the female apostle. Authenticity and artificiality, reality and deception, consumption and religion; these are the subjects I am dealing with.

Much of my work is floating in the uncharted waters of the inner narrative. Interpersonal dynamics between people and their complicated relationships within themselves lead me to a visual exploration of the human psyche. Universal themes such as love, sorrow, hope, humor, and irony are used to navigate and reflect the many facets of emotion.

I spent 28 years working in an abandoned farmhouse returning to my home on weekends. This image is where I had my easel by the window. On summer nights the moths would come to the light and thump against the screen as I painted.

My work is a kind of order out of chaos. The paint runs into organic shapes. Within these shapes, birds, animals, people or parts of them emerge. They’re never “perfect”! But it is important to see the beauty in the imperfections. The contrast to the organic shapes and figures are the static graphic patterns: order out of chaos.

I believe creative works, through images and color, have the power to heal, nurture & harmonize our surrounding space, rebalancing energy. Some works can provide an individual with a key to allow ‘self-healing’, giving a person access to somewhere deep inside where healing can take place naturally.

When I look at an image, I see it for what it can become. Realism is riddled with anxiety-induced pressure. I prefer collage. I manipulate to expand the story, creating digitally and in real life with keys and clicks and scissors and glue. I often distort or erase faces. Replace identity with landscapes, color, and shape. This allows viewers to bring their own impressions.

We tend to discard one messenger and replace it with another, thinking that we have turned a new leaf. In fact, none of our messengers go away; rather they cling to the new messengers, creating a far more complex tapestry of communication between all the beings and forces around us.

My spatial works and installations comment on the dual nature of mankind. The apparent natural order is disrupted by the organic, raw shapes of stuffed animals-showing horns and bones. The natural upsets the culturally constructed order. The contrast between smooth and raw, order and chaos, culture and nature is inherent to mankind. We all carry a ‘dark side’’ within ourselves. My sculptures represent this tension between co-existing inner forces that clash and complement each other at the same time.

My experiences working within the medical field as a scientist in Japan, a country with many superstitions, gave me the ability to perceive the world from two contrasting perspectives. My artwork depicts my view of the world as layers and linkages of lives and events. The deceased stay with the living as a form of memory, story, knowledge, and genetic codes creating layers of rich histories that also enhance people’s lives. This installation metaphorically explores changing visual forms.